Your Accounting System - Turnaround Tour ShopPros



Money Financial Process

Accounting System

Organizing your financial information

Purpose of this Idea:

The purpose of this idea is to create a system for collecting, organizing, managing and reporting your financial information.

Result or Output:

The output of this work will be identifying all of the key components required to run your accounting system and produce financial reports.

Why You Need an Accounting System:

Accounting is a process – a series of activities that begins with a transaction and ends with the closing of the books. Because this process is repeated each reporting period, it is often referred to as the accounting cycle.

Your accounting records are mission critical because the resulting financial statements and reports help you plan and make business decisions. They may be used by some third parties (bankers, investors, or creditors) and are needed to provide information to government agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service.

Keeping good money financial records is a fundamental process of running your business and that is the main reason why you need an accounting system – to keep good financial records.

Your Accounting System

An accounting system can be represented by the following graphic:

[pic]

As we just mentioned accounting is a process or cycle with the following major steps, which expand on the previous flow chart:

1. Identify the transaction and capture it with a source document

2. Classify the transaction – quantify it in monetary terms, identify the accounts affected, and whether those accounts are to be debited or credited.

3. Record the transaction in the general journal in chronological order.

4. Post general journal entries to general ledger.

5. Prepare a trial balance to make sure that debits equal credits.

6. Correct any discrepancies and post any required adjustments.

7. Prepare and distribute financial reports.

8. Management review of financial reports.

9. Close by posting closing entries in the ledger.

Key Points

• Accounting is the method in which financial information is gathered, processed, and summarized into financial statements and reports.

• Every accounting entry is based on a business transaction, which is usually evidenced by a source document

• Source Documents are the “first copy” of your financial transactions, and they need to have detailed information on them so you can retrace your “paper trail” if you have to.

• The general journal is a place to record the transactions captured by the source documents in chronological order.

• Some companies use additional journals. These other journals are used to record the chronological, day-to-day transactions and may be a sales and cash receipts journals and/or a cash disbursements journal.

• Your Chart of Accounts organizes that information into different categories so you know where your money is going.

• While a journal records transactions as they happen, a ledger groups transactions according to their type, based on the accounts they affect.

• The general ledger is a collection of all balance sheets, income, and expense accounts used to keep a business's accounting records.

• At the end of an accounting period, all journal entries are summarized and transferred to the general ledger accounts. This procedure is called "posting."

• A trial balance is prepared at the end of an accounting period by adding up all the account balances in your general ledger. The sum of the debit balances should equal the sum of the credit balances. If total debits don't equal total credits, you must track down the errors.

• Finally, financial statements are prepared from the information in your trial balance.

• The result of all this is that you now have a clear process for organizing and tracking your financial information.

Accounting Components

Let’s look at each one of these components in greater detail so you will understand how to set up your Accounting System for your business.

Source Documents

Source Documents are things like repair orders, parts invoices, returns, cores, purchase orders, credit cards receipts, technician flag sheets, checks written, estimate sheets and employee timecards just o mention a few. Look at your Source Documents as the foundation of a pyramid, instead of the bottom tier. Everything you do in the future with your accounting rests on these base documents.

Every Source Document needs to have the basic facts on it, such as:

• The date

• The people involved

• How much money was involved (either coming in or going out)

• What was exchanged for the money (such as products, or time worked)

• A short description of the transaction

• A numbered sequence for each type of source document to minimize errors and help in organizing and tracking (for example, the numbers on your checks)

These are just a few minimum requirements. Obviously, depending on your business you may want to include more information than this.

General Journal

The General Journal is the point of entry of business transaction into your accounting system. It is a chronological record of the transactions showing an explanation of each transaction, the accounts affected, whether those accounts were increased or decreased, and by what amount.

Your General Journal is like your business’s financial diary. All you’re doing is recording everything that happens financially in your business’s day-to-day operation.

And you don’t have to have just one journal. Some businesses have several, such as a “cash journal” to record all their cash transactions, or accounts receivable or accounts payable journals. Special journals are helpful when your business does a large amount of transactions in one area.

Chart of Accounts

The Chart of Accounts is a listing of all of your different types of accounts listed in your general ledger, with each account type assigned a reference number. To set up a chart of accounts properly for the auto repair business model you should first define the various types of accounts used by the auto repair industry businesses. Remember above the line means revenue on labor and parts then cost of labor and parts associated with that revenue. Then you will be able to track your gross profit dollars and percentages on labor and parts so you can benchmark your numbers. Also below the line comes the cost of doing business financial numbers.

Your Chart of Accounts is going to help you organize and analyze all the different accounts in your business so you can make better business decisions.

Different businesses (industries) will have slightly different types of accounts. For example, a manufacturer will have various accounts associated with the cost of manufacturing, a retailer will have various accounts associated with the purchase of merchandise to stock shelves, and a service based business will have various accounts associated with who is delivering the service. Many industry trade associations and accounting software packages have recommended industry standard account types. This is a great place to start and then working with your accountant and / or your accounting department you will customize it to your specific needs.

In order to assign a reference number to each account you can break down your accounts into basic categories like these:

• Assets

• Liabilities

• Equity

• Income / Revenue

• Expenses

These different accounts help you track how you receive and spend your money. The key here is to set up accounts that will work for you.

General Ledger

The General Ledger is a collection of all your different accounts. While the general journal is organized as a chronological record of transactions, the ledger is organized by account. You might think of the General Ledger as a net that’s pulling all this information into an organized, cohesive whole, all in one place.

The General Ledger uses something called “double entry system”. This system is a simple way to ensure accuracy when adding or subtracting many numbers. For every transaction, you’re going to enter the total into two columns. The general ledger is a collection of these double entry accounts to which debits and credits are accounted for. The action of recording a debit or credit in the general ledger is referred to as a posting. The posting of a journal entry to the general ledger accounts is a purely mechanical process using information already in the journal entry and requiring no additional analysis.

Because the general ledger is organized by account, it allows one to view the activity and balance of any account at a glance.

Trial Balance

A basic rule for double entry accounting is that for every credit there must be an equal debit amount. If the journal entries are error free and were posted properly to the general ledger, the total of all of the debit balances should equal the total of all of the credit balances. If debits do not equal credits, then an error has been made. The trial balance is the tool for detecting such errors.

The trial balance is calculated by summarizing the balance of all the ledger accounts. The account balances are used because the balance summarizes the net effect of all of the debits and credits in the account.

The more often the trial balance is calculated during the accounting cycle, the easier it is to isolate any errors. More frequent balance calculations narrow the time frame in which the error could have occurred, resulting in fewer transactions to review.

Sample Trial Balance:

| |Debit |Credit |

|Cash in bank |3,423 | |

|Accounts receivable |11,400 | |

|Equipment |42,900 | |

|Accumulated depr. equip. | |29,500 |

|Buildings |119,000 | |

|Accumulated depr. build. | |17,950 |

|Land |80,000 | |

|Accounts payable | |2,213 |

|Payroll taxes payable | |2,567 |

|Mortgage payable | |135,812 |

|Capital | |59,823 |

|Drawing account |24,000 | |

|Sales | |332,462 |

|Advertising |18,900 | |

|Depreciation |16,760 | |

|Insurance |4,500 | |

|Interest expense |12,421 | |

|Payroll taxes |16,233 | |

|Property taxes |4,989 | |

|Repairs and maintenance |23,430 | |

|Utilities |3,856 | |

|Wages |198,515 | |

| |580,327 |580,327 |

Financial Reports

Financial reports in the form of financial statements can now be prepared using information from the ledger. These reports are issued on a periodic basis. General Accepted Accounting Practices [GAAP] requires the following four financial statements:

• Income Statement – revenues minus expenses for a given time period ending at a specific date.

• Balance Sheet – statement of financial position at a given point in time.

• Statement of Owners Equity – also known as Statement of Retained Earnings or Equity Statement.

• Cash Flow Statement – summarizes sources and uses of cash; indicates whether enough cash is available to carry on routine operations.

Cash and Accrual Accounting Systems Compared

When using the cash accounting method you are recording all transactions, revenues and expenses, only when you actually get paid or pay expenses. For example, you repair a vehicle today but don’t get paid until next month the revenue goes into next month sales revenue not the month you did the work but the month you got paid. Likewise on parts you may have paid for the parts when you received them, you are accounting for them the date and month you actually paid for them. As you can see your revenue and cost when doing cash accounting may not match up. Be very careful while comparing numbers so you are seeing the truth.

When using the accrual method, revenues and expenses are recorded according to when they are earned and incurred, not necessarily when the cash is received or paid. For example, under the accrual method revenue is recognized when customers are invoiced, regardless of when payment is received. Similarly, an expense is recognized when the bill is received, not when payment is made.

Based on our previous auto repair example, accrual accounting would be recording your income in month when you actually performed the service, not in month when you actually get paid. The cash accounting method is the simpler of the two, although your books can look slightly “off” with this system. The reason is because when you repair a vehicle in one month, you incurred expenses for that repair perhaps in another month. However your books will make it look like you’re spending more than you’re making. In reality, of course, you’re not but it can reflect a less accurate picture on a month-to-month basis.

Most companies use the accrual accounting method because it’s a more accurate picture of what’s going on. This method, however, does not allow you to track your cash flow (which you need to do) so you’ll need to use another process to do this.

How do you choose which method to use? You ask your accountant to help you choose based on your industry, your situation, and how you plan to use the information to run your business.

When transaction timing is important to make comparisons from month to month, when you need to match payables to receivables, then accrual accounting becomes the preferred method. The calculation of your financial ratios is more consistent and will provide more accuracy when comparing time period to period.

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